She Advocated For Women, Then Microsoft Pushed Her Off Its Board — With Maria Klawe

“Are you trying to fucking destroy the company?” That’s what Bill Gates told Microsoft board member Maria Klawe when she asked why Microsoft wouldn’t consider a single women out of 50 candidates it was evaluating to replace then-CEO Steve Ballmer. When Microsoft settled on Satya Nadella, he later joined Klawe at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women In Computing and told her that instead of asking for a raise, women should just have faith in the system to get it right. The incident caused an uproar, and Nadella apologized and promised to do better. One year later, Microsoft’s board pushed Klawe out, telling her it was looking for more “conventional” women in business. Klawe joins Big Technology Podcast to tell the full, shocking, uncut story. The BI story: https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-director-maria-klawe-satya-nadella-raises-gaffe-karma-2021-5 Always Day One: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07V65YKZT Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  This episode is brought to you by Genesis. What does it actually take to put Agentic AI to work across an entire enterprise? I recently spoke with Genesis chairman and CEO Tony Bates about why orchestration is emerging as a competitive advantage in customer experience and what companies need to get right in the AI era. Then I sat down with Adam Mitchell, head of enterprise business solutions at Voya Financial, to go inside a large-scale Agentic CX transformation, including the business decisions, trade-offs, and lessons along the way. You can watch both conversations now on my YouTube channel today. It's never been more challenging to get frontier compute. How do you know where to look, who to trust, or how much to pay?

• 0:43Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello and welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversations of the tech world and beyond. Joining us today is a very special guest. She's a computer scientist, the president of Harvey Mudd College, and a former Microsoft board member who's agreed to come on and speak with us about her experiences. Maria Klawe, welcome to the show.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  So, my pleasure.

• 1:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's great to have you. I've been following your career for a while, and you've been involved in some really interesting moments in tech. And I can't express how grateful I am to have you here on the show, so thank you for joining us. So usually with the interviews that we do, I like to kind of go in with a soft takeoff and then maybe we get to the more intense stuff. But sorry, I think we have to just start with the more intense stuff right off the bat because I read this Business Insider article that quoted you about your time at Microsoft and my eyes kind of dropped out of my head after having read some of the details in there.

• 2:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  So for folks who are just coming into this story, you had hosted or had interviewed Satya Nadella in 2014 and it was an event for women about women in the tech world. And this issue came up where, I mean, I'm going to let you tell the story, but I'll just start it off and then you can go from there. But this issue came up where you asked Satya a very fair question, which apparently he had the question in advance, which was, if a woman wants a raise in the workplace, how do they bring it up? Very simple question. So how did, and it turned into a bit of an issue. So take us from there. How did Satya answer that and why did he get him into trouble?

• 2:59Speaker 01

  Well, the first thing is that it was the last question in the interview. It was an hour-long fireside chat at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. And I think one of the things was that Satya was used to interacting with me in my persona at the Microsoft board meetings. And I had learned to be fairly quiet there, just because when I spoke up, I would often get sort of trounced by Bill Gates or somebody else.

• 3:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  What do you mean trounced, by the way?

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Oh, yelled at for asking what seemed like a straightforward question and being asked if I was trying to destroy the company.

• 3:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Really?

• 3:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  Isn't the purpose, sorry, we're already going off track, but isn't the purpose of the board to sort of press management in a way that they might not be getting, you know, within the rest of the company?

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Well, I thought, but this would happen whenever I'd ask about a technology, diversity in the tech company.

• 4:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  So Bill Gates wasn't hearing that.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Right. So he was not interested in that. But in any case, Satya had agreed to do this. It was about, I think about Nine months into his time, or maybe eight months into his time as CEO. And I thought very, very highly of Satya, I still do. And I was really delighted he agreed to let me interview him. And he actually asked that the women employees at Microsoft from around the world be allowed to suggest the questions. And so he had, he, of those suggested questions, he picked the ones that he wanted to answer. And gave me the list. And this was the last.

• 4:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  No tricks.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Yes, so this was the last one on the list. They were all good questions. But the thing about this was that I'm a pretty goofy person at Grey's Hopper. Like, I'm, and I think Satya just was surprised by the way I was. And as a result, he was, I think, got a little bit more relaxed than he normally would have been. And, and so when I asked this question, which was, if you wanted to pay raise, what would your advice? If a woman wanted to pay raise at Microsoft, what would your advice be?

• 5:21Speaker 01

  And his response was something on the order of, it's good karma just to let the system take care of it. So you shouldn't ask.

• 5:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I have the exact, the exact quote. It's not, it's not really about asking for a raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will give you the right raise, which, I mean, you pushed back, you know, very, you know, appropriately, because if you trusted the system, you wouldn't have to ask that question.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, and also, I mean, there's sort of two things about asking for a raise. And I will just say, as I probably said actually at the interview, I'm not very good at asking for raises myself. I've gotten better over the years. But one thing I've learned is it's important to. Practice making the ask with somebody you're comfortable with so that you're not all nervous. And secondly, it's important to have your data and have an idea of what a competitive salary would be. And be able to pitch it as a win for both the company and for you. And so that's what I said. And uh, the, that particular part of the interview went viral instantly.

• 6:31Speaker 01

  And Satya, um, immediately after the interview, he sent a message to every Microsoft employee. Uh, apologizing for getting the answer wrong and saying that Maria had it right. And, and then, you know, I saw him later on in the afternoon and talked to him about it. And by the next day, what he said was he was gonna go back to Microsoft. And he was going to take some courses on diversity and inclusion. And he was gonna make sure the rest of the senior team did as well. Because if he could get that wrong, maybe others could as well. And I think he was completely right there.

• 7:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, he, he's called it like one of the most important moments for him in Microsoft. I think obviously it, it sort of opened his eyes to where his blind spot might have been. Which as a leader to see your blind spot and then learn is a good quality.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  And I can't tell you how many people, both inside Microsoft and outside Microsoft, told me how much they admired his, the fact that he, that he admitted he got it wrong. And the fact that he took a lot of steps thereafter to really try and improve diversity and inclusion. Um, kind of things at Microsoft. And, you know, I heard for the next three years or so from women at Microsoft, oh my goodness, things are so much better. So.

• 7:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  I, I thought it was.

• 7:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  Very big scandal for him. You know, early going.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  I don't think scandal is the right word. I think it's more like this was a really good learning opportunity. Where he really.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  He displayed that as a CEO, he could learn. And I heard so many good, so many comments from so many people around the world about how impressed they were with how he handled it. So I didn't think of it as a scandal at all.

• 8:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Maybe I should rephrase that a little bit. I think it was a bit of a PR snafu because the next day, you know, I was researching before this conversation and every major network carried it as we were trying to figure out who's this Satya Nadella who's taking over this storied tech company. That was one of the big first impressions that he made. And even before the networks could pronounce his name, they were talking about this. But you're right, definitely a learning moment.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Well, I did 15 news interviews the next day. I mean, initially, Microsoft had asked me not to talk to reporters and then they decided it would be better if I did talk to reporters. And so we agreed on what the message would be, which was entirely what I believe, which is he made a mistake, people make mistakes, he corrected it. He's going to make sure that things are actually better in terms of women and other underrepresented groups at Microsoft in the future.

• 9:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  So, and that was the initial story. And I think that's largely what's been talked about up until recently. And then, again, this is this business insider story that just came out by Ashley Stewart came out in May, where you talked a little bit more about what happened in the aftermath. So, you know, the timing's interesting, right? So this conversation happens in October 2014. October 2015, you announced that you're leaving the board. What happened in the year in between?

• 9:54Speaker 01

  Well, the Chair of the Board was John Thompson. He became Chair of the Board when Satya became the CEO. And he told me very directly that he was very upset that I had, number one, invited Satya to do that interview and number two, corrected him what he made, gave the wrong answer. And I told him that I, and he felt that I'd hurt the reputation of Microsoft by doing that. And I argued that, as far as I was concerned,

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Satya was the first CEO of Microsoft to be interviewed on the main stage at Grace Hopper. He was very happy to do it. He did a great job, except for that one answer.

• 10:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Mm hmm.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  And that the way he'd handled it had actually helped Microsoft's research reputation enormously as a result. And there was no reason, I completely disagreed with John, that this was something that hurt the company.

• 10:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and it's interesting because I, you know, I mean, John might be, might have looked at it as PR crisis, but ultimately a board is there to make the company better.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  And you would imagine this was one of those key moments that's going to make the company better. So.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  That's what I thought, but it definitely wasn't what John thought.

• 11:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And so, so I, I'm curious, like, do you, well, I'm curious who you think he was looking out for, you know, and when he came to you with that pushback. And then if you could share a little more about what happened after that.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Well, I think he thought he was looking out for the company. I think he just disagreed with me and with many others about the impact on Microsoft of that having happened. And, um, you know, essentially, uh, he came to see me at the September, so a little bit less than a year afterwards, to tell me that he was going to ask me to leave the board, uh, that he wanted to have more quote unquote conventional women on the board, uh, who weren't as outspoken.

• 11:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  What, is that what, I mean, in his words, conventional? That's unbelievable.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  Yes, conventional businesswomen. Uh, and, uh, you know, he had two, he wanted to replace me with two women, which he thought would be, and one of them was a woman of color. He thought that would make me very happy. And, you know, at the time, I felt I had two possibilities. One is I could object.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  And I could have gone to the media at that point. And the other one is I could uh try to find a way to work through it more smoothly. And at the time, I I will say I was tremendously upset and.

• 12:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, describe how it felt because that's.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  Oh, I felt completely silenced and dismissed. I mean, I just felt I had put a lot of effort into Microsoft. I really love the company and I just felt that um I had actually helped the company by doing this interview with Satya. And I just felt really, I don't know, dissed, I guess, dismissed.

• 13:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Uh disregarded all of those kinds of things. So it was interesting, my daughter uh had uh who's a does peace negotiations uh currently for the United Nations uh in Syria. And she um talked to me about it before I actually had the meeting with John. He'd announced that he wanted to come see me in person uh and had set a date, you know, maybe a week to 10 days. And I knew what he was gonna say. Um and because there's just no way he would have come to visit me in person unless he was gonna ask me to leave the board. And so I talked to my daughter about it and she took me through this negotiation strategy.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Um which uh uh she did her law degree at Harvard and, you know, uh had uh had done a lot of negotiation work. And um as a result, I came up with a reason that I would want to leave the board. And because I thought that it would be more.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Diplomatic and more professional to simply say that I was going to be asking Bill Gates for a major gift. And there would be a conflict if I were to do that while I was still on the board. And so, in fact, my meeting with John Thompson was extremely cordial. And it is true that I was hoping to ask Bill for a twenty million dollar gift for a new computer science building we were going to build. Uh, and it sort of sounded as though Bill was leaning towards doing that. In the end, he gave us one million.

• 14:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hmm.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Uh, which was a huge disappointment. The building is now built. It's totally gorgeous. It's called the Scott McGregor Center. And it is one of the most beautiful computer science buildings I've seen in my career. But in any case, I, I had chosen this particular route. And, you know, I think part of what happened in the time, you know, so you might ask, well, you know, why would I, why would I actually talk about it now?

• 15:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hmm.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  And I think part of it is, there were a lot of things at the time I wouldn't, that I found really quite distasteful about my experiences of being the micro, on the Microsoft board. And one of them was, you know, certainly the way that Bill treated any, uh, any question about, so the, you know, the way this came up was, there was a, at one of my early meetings, maybe my first board meeting, there was a list of fifty people on the succession chart for the CEO. At that point, CEO was Steve Ballmer. And there were no women out of the fifty.

• 16:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Wait, wait, let's say, let's just pause on that. Fifty people as a possible successor to Ballmer?

• 16:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 16:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  All men?

• 16:08Speaker 01

  All men. And two people of color, who were both Indian.

• 16:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hmm.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  And I'm like. You know, how can that be right in a company like Microsoft? How could it possibly be that there are fifty people and there are no women? And there are only two people of color out of fifty? And they're both Indian? And that was when Bill said, are you trying to destroy the? Are you trying to effing destroy the company? Except he didn't say effing, he said the.

• 16:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  He told that to you?

• 16:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. At the, at the board table. And I said, uh, the other woman on the board, uh, who's Dino de Blonde? When we had our first break, she came up to him. She said, Maria, it's so nice to have someone else that Bill was yelling at.

• 16:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hmm.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  She said.

• 16:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Did he give a, a re- sorry, I'll, I'll let you continue. Did he give a reason or I mean?

• 17:01Speaker 01

  No. It was just like, you idiot. Why would you? Why would you think diversity in the succession chain matters?

• 17:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Ah.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  I mean, okay. So, and there was a fair amount of that kind of thing where if you, I mean, I, of course, this, so this was my first. I'd been on startup boards before, but this is my first public company. And so of course I got sent to, uh, a bunch of, um, board training. Uh, so the first one I went to was at the Stanford Law School, uh, offered one. And you're told over and over again, the most important thing to do is ask questions.

• 17:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  And.

• 17:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  What's the boards for?

• 17:45Speaker 01

  It was just like, why would you ask questions? What? You know, why aren't you just shutting up? Because I, I mean, the thing, one of the things I was told was that in the early days of the board, that, uh, board meetings, they had to be held on weekends because, uh, Bill and Steve didn't want to use up valuable weekday time. For this nonsense of having to meet with the board.

• 18:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  So they didn't have such a high opinion of, what was, what was the Bill's role at the time? Cause he had left the CEO. So what was he officially doing at Microsoft?

• 18:18Speaker 01

  He was chief software architect at that point.

• 18:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hmm. And did he have a board role or?

• 18:25Speaker 01

  He was on the board, yes.

• 18:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  Um, and, uh, well, at that time he was actually tech, he was chair of the board.

• 18:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. So he was the board chair.

• 18:35Speaker 01

  And I think, uh, I'm trying to remember who was the lead independent director when I first started. I think it was, uh, somebody who left the board soon after that. And, uh, then it was, um, Reed Hastings. And then it, you know, it moved around, but.

• 18:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep. So you said, so like you're, you're deciding to speak up now and the reason is?

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Uh, well, first of all, I just turned 70. Uh, yesterday.

• 19:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, happy birthday.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  Yes, thank you. And I just realized that it's time to talk about some of these things like I.

• 19:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hmm.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  Uh, part of it, I think is that I have a lot of respect for Melinda Gates.

• 19:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hmm.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  And I, I think before their divorce was announced, I was in some ways reluctant to criticize Bill.

• 19:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  And, um, because it would, in some ways,

• 19:44Speaker 01

  the criticism could be interpreted as also criticizing Melinda. And I think, uh, I think Melinda has done amazing things. I'm a huge admirer. And so I think that was part of it. You know, I heard from a number of people afterwards that, um,

• 20:02Speaker 01

  You know, I got talked about in the valley as being very outspoken. Well, I am very outspoken. That is definitely true. And I just felt it was time to actually speak up about going through an experience like that. And it was interesting because before the Business Insider article was published, I had, you know, they, they always check, you know, so they checked with Microsoft, they spoke to Brad Smith. They checked with Bill, the people representing Bill. Bill's comment was, he's always been a big champion of women. Look at all the things that Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has done to support women. Well, yeah, they have done amazing things, but that's not because of Bill.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  And so I had a conversation with Brad Smith and I have, I already said I have a lot of respect for Satya Nadella. I also have a lot of respect for Brad Smith. And he was sort of, sort of like, why would you do this now? And I'm sort of saying, because I think it's, it's, it was a really bad experience from my perspective. And I think people should start to talk about these kinds of things.

• 21:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hmm. Yeah. I mean, so just to recap, so the story is, is, I mean, fairly unbelievable, but I guess believable, given the world that we live in. But you, you sit down with Satya, he has the questions ahead of time. Let me know if I'm getting any of this wrong. He has the questions ahead of time. One of them is, how should women ask for raises inside a company? He says, trust the system and karma will end up bringing the raises. And he gets criticized for that because the system hasn't been traditionally good at delivering raises to women. I mean, in tech for sure, we know that to be true. He then apologizes and says this is one of the main things that have helped his leadership inside Microsoft.

• 22:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  And then the head of the board comes for you. I mean,

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Am I getting that right?

• 22:05Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 22:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, okay.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you know,

• 22:12Speaker 01

  What can I say? It's a good story, but it's really surprising.

• 22:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. Now, just let's take a moment. And so I want to hear from, from just before we go to break, from your perspective, when you heard the answer, trust the system. You know, so I guess I'm trying to put myself inside his shoes, but he's trying to say, I mean, obviously, he doesn't want everybody coming to ask him for raises right away. I'm trying to think, what is he trying to say that maybe Microsoft is going to be good? Let me handle this. I got this? Or and what do you think he was trying to say? And what do you think was wrong with his answer?

• 22:48Speaker 01

  Okay, so I think that I think he was genuinely not picking up the difference between a woman wanting advice about asking a raise, because women are well known to not be as willing to ask for a raise as men are.

• 23:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  And I think he was just talking in general about employees would be better off trusting the system. And the reason I corrected him was that I really do think because women ask less often, that's one of the things that actually accounts for them being paid less and being promoted less often. And I want, that's the point I wanted to make. And I don't in any way think he was discriminating against women. But his response was interpreted as discriminating against women.

• 23:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  Because it was at a conference for women in tech.

• 23:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  For women. Yeah. And you think that he learned, obviously, he did make some changes after that. After the break, I want to talk about some of the persisting issues inside Microsoft. And maybe we can get a little bit into your time on the board. I'm always curious how these corporate boards work. And we've gotten a little bit of insight already. But maybe we could take a little bit deeper from that than that, if that seems good to you.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 24:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, so we'll be right back here with Maria Clave on the Big Technology Podcast. Stick around. We'll be back in just a minute or two. This episode is brought to you by Avpoint. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Co-pilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data. And most teams have no single way to see it, secure it, and prove it's under control. That's exactly what Avpoint does. For 25 years, they've been the trusted layer beneath the world's most demanding data, now extended across your entire AI estate. Your data, your cloud, and the agents acting on your behalf.

• 24:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's how more than 28,000 organizations deploy AI with confidence. So innovation scales without scaling risk. Avpoint, the unifying trust layer for AI. Head to avpoint.com to see how enterprises deploy AI with confidence. Learn more at avpt.co/bigtechnologypodcast. That's avpt.co/bigtechnologypodcast.

• 25:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here on the Big Technology Podcast with Maria Klawe. She served six years, six years, right? On the board of Microsoft? Almost seven. And the president of Harvey Mudd College in California? In California, Clermont, California. Great. So I wrote about the instance that we talked about in the first part of the podcast in my book, Always Day One. And while I was researching what was going on at Microsoft, I saw that some issues still persisted with the company's treatment of women. Now, the culture, it seems for a long time, has been loudest guy in the room, often guy.

• 26:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Very like kind of software engineer powered type of place. And just like, yeah, the men that had had sort of been there forever controlled it. So I wondered whether it had solved some of the issues that it had with treatment of women in the workplace. And then I saw there was a letter, this is a report from 2019 in Wired, that had gone around, Microsoft, where women inside the company had complained about their treatment. So I'm going to see if I can read a little bit from the story. So the story said, "One woman wrote she had been asked to sit on someone's lap twice during a business meeting where HR and other executives were present and no one objected. The HR leader was later promoted while the woman was reprimanded for not following policy."

• 26:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, that's unbelievable to read. And then here's another one. One woman mentioned that during a roundtable with women for Xbox, nearly all the women had said they had been called the B word at work. So I saw you obviously, you know, said he's making an attempt to approve. I have no doubt that he had an earnest attempt to do it. Are you surprised? I mean, yeah, are you surprised to see some of these issues persist at Microsoft? What was, what's your reaction upon hearing some of this stuff?

• 27:22Speaker 01

  Well, I think that the first thing would say it's a very big company.

• 27:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  You know, over hundreds of thousands.

• 27:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Employees. And, and so my sense is that from talking to women at Microsoft is that things got much better in some parts of Microsoft and not so much in other parts.

• 27:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  Which is, and a big part of this is culture. So

• 27:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  I would say, uh, the Microsoft culture really was very much about the loved person in the room. And, and whether you're a male or female, you were, the only way you were going to be taken seriously is if you knew how to argue your points effectively. But when women argue their points effectively, they're much more likely to be called the B word. And when men argue their points effectively, they're just being assertive.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  But women are being aggressive and bitchy. So, and you know, I'll never forget, I worked at IBM Research for eight years after, um, starting in 1980. And, um, when I started working at the

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Microsoft, at the IBM Research Lab in San Jose, California. One of the things I did early on at a lunch with the director of the lab was to say that I thought we should start a lecture series that was open to all lab members. And he basically said, there's no point in doing that. Most researchers don't know how to give a talk that other people in other disciplines could understand. And I argued with him. And that got me the nickname of bitch on wheels.

• 29:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, my God.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  And, and of course, I started a lecture series. It was called the Leonardo da Vinci Lecture Series, and it was a success, et cetera. I mean, I wasn't gonna stop just because the director thought it was a bad idea. But, you know, um, so I think the, the thing is that if you're at a place like Microsoft, where in order to have to be heard, you have to be really very assertive about your

• 29:45Speaker 01

  ideas. And you probably have to be persistent and say it more than once, because the first and second and third time you say it may not actually register. Of course, you get labeled a bitch. I mean, it just, there's sort of no way around that. And, um, and the fact that, um, you know, if I think about Xbox. So I remember, uh, I was, I led a research project started in 1992 on, uh, gender differences and how children play with video games. And I had an interview with the person in charge of Nintendo for the US uh, as I was starting this work.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  And he just told me, girls will never play video games. They don't like video games. We don't even think about them when we're thinking about producing things for Nintendo. And I was sort of like, that's ridiculous. But, you know.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  There's so much bias about video games and, you know, how women are represented in games. You know, large breasts.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  I mean, Cortana was, who's the Siri-like individual from Microsoft,

• 31:11Speaker 01

  is named after a character in, you know, a basic, a standard video game with princesses and princes and thrones and

• 31:21Speaker 01

  violent action and so on.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  I could hardly be surprised at all that every woman in that rotating pool, at some point, somebody would have called her a bitch.

• 31:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Did you ever bring up the Cortana thing at, at the board meetings?

• 31:36Speaker 01

  I did.

• 31:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  But how did they react?

• 31:39Speaker 01

  It was just, you know, waved away. It doesn't matter.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  I mean, like, I'm going, why would you want to name it after a character who is very heavily sexualized and that, you know, no woman in tech would want to be compared with?

• 32:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  And they weren't, they weren't hearing it?

• 32:03Speaker 01

  Definitely not.

• 32:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  How much, so you mentioned Bill Gates. Let's talk about him for a moment. How much of this do you think was due to the culture that he developed at Microsoft? You think about the big tech companies, a lot of them are just kind of in the, in the mold of their founders. Amazon is very Jeff Bezos. Facebook is a Zuckerberg-type of place. Microsoft, how much of this is sort of the culture?

• 32:26Speaker 01

  Hugely from, you know, I, I would say Bill, Paul Allen, and Steve Ballmer as well. And, you know, I think one of the, the things about somebody like Bill Gates is he literally thinks he's one of the smartest people in the universe. And he's a highly intelligent and successful person, but he's definitely not one of the smartest people I've met. Partly because he doesn't know what he doesn't know. I mean, he really thinks he can go talk to somebody for a couple of hours and he will understand deep things. And one of my my favorite argument was Bill was when he told me that there was no real mathematical research being done in the last 20 years, that there

• 33:11Speaker 01

  were no real discoveries. And I happen to be, first of all, I'm a research mathematician, but I'm also on the board of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute at Berkeley, which is the top place in the world for convening mathematicians from around the world to basically work on the hottest topics. And I'm telling him about some of the recent discoveries in the last 20 years and, you know, how big this is and et cetera. And he's like, no, no, I know. I talked to somebody who really knew the field and they told me there were no recent discoveries. And I'm saying, you're talking to somebody who really knows the field and she's telling you that there are. And, you know, just sort of crazy.

• 33:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And it's so going back to the way I started the segment, Satya can come in and he's changed the culture for sure. But he had his work come out cut out for him.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Oh, for sure.

• 34:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  There was a lot to change. And I've always thought that the strategy of Microsoft, you know, he shifted it from the desktop operating system to cloud and mobile. That was one thing. The culture was always the toughest thing for him to change. And it takes time.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  I think so. There's a saying that culture eats strategy for lunch every day. I think culture, changing culture is the hardest thing to change in any organization and does take a lot of time. But I think he's made a lot of progress.

• 34:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, yeah. And it's, yeah, I think you're right. Like, it's a big company. It's never going to be 100% right away. But from what I've heard from the people I spoke with inside the company, it is very different from, you know, the days of Gates and Ballmer.

• 34:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  Where people are, people seem to be listened to in some way. And it's funny, like Gates and Ballmer era doesn't seem like people really listen to. And that's kind of, I think, why the strategy went off the rails. And your experience, you know, is sort of indicative of, of what happened there.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, I think it really, they needed a reset. I think Satya was a fantastic choice. Now, to refer to Bill Gates, who pushed hardest to pick Satya? It was Bill.

• 35:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  It was Bill, okay.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  It was Bill, and I think he was totally right.

• 35:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, yeah, it was a good choice. Do you have any other fun Bill Gates stories? Now that we're on a roll, I figured, okay, let's see if there's any more.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I, I guess one of the things I want to point out is that he was the person who started the Giving Pledge. And, and so, you know, I don't want in any way to say that Bill has not done good things with his life. He certainly has done some very good things with his life. And I think, you know, much of the global health progress has come out of the Gates Foundation. And that's something he really pushed. He's pushing very hard on the climate change issue. So, you know, I don't want to say this is somebody who, you know, this is somebody who's done a lot of very good things with his life as well.

• 36:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  So I would say that most of the, so most of the strange things are just one's social interactions with him. And, you know, the, the fact that he can be very charming and, and very thoughtful and, you know, completely there and interacting with you. And then the next time you see him, it's like you're a fly on the wall.

• 36:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, yeah. And that's something we, I mean, also he gets credit, I think, for some of the vaccine stuff that

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 36:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  We talked about this on the show. He really pushed that forward.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  And put pressure on a lot of countries to get their, their act together when it came to the COVID vaccines and look at what it's done for us. So people are complex, but uh

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 37:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Doesn't mean we should let them off the hook, I guess, if they're gonna be jerks, especially about important issues like the ones we've talked about. So just kind of curious, how, how does someone join the, a board of a company like Microsoft and what? And let's end this, this section on this, like, how do you join the board of a, of a company like Microsoft? And what is it like? Participating in something like that?

• 37:25Speaker 01

  Well, it was my first public company board. I think you will not be surprised that I was very, I mean, I really wanted to do it. I had, um, I had noticed that Shirley Tillman, who's president of Princeton, had joined the Google board. And John Hennessy was on the Apple board and the Google board. And um, I had had a conversation with the board chair at the time at Harvey Mudd and said that I was interested in joining the board of public company. And he said, well, do you have any companies in mind? And I said, well, my two top choices, uh,

• 38:02Speaker 01

  well, my three top choices will actually be probably Google, Microsoft and Amazon. Google's not gonna happen because they already have an academic leader on the board. Well, actually have two academic leaders on the board. Um,

• 38:18Speaker 01

  so Amazon and Microsoft would, would be my first choices. And uh, she sort of laughed and said, you know, it's not like you're aiming higher or anything. And um,

• 38:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's the way to do it.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  Maybe two months after that, I got a phone call from Rick Rashid, who was then head of Microsoft Research and somebody I have known for a long time. I know a lot of people at Microsoft Research. And um, he said that they were considering adding an academic leader to the board and they were interested in somebody who was um,

• 38:54Speaker 01

  Had done a lot of strategic planning, which is something I have done a lot of. And somebody who's a computer scientist and a possible, a woman. Well, how many?

• 39:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Check, check, check.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  How many female computer scientists are presidents of at higher ed institutions?

• 39:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  One.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  So, um, and, and Rick, bless his heart, um, had, uh, he said, you're probably not going to be interested in this. And I said, Rick, it's on my to do list.

• 39:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Amazing.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  And, and so, um, the next thing was that I went up to Seattle and had a meeting with Bill Gates. For like forty five minutes and he spent pretty much all of his time asking me about Harvey Mudd. And, uh, so on. And then the next thing was that Steve Ballmer came down to visit me at Harvey Mudd and interviewed me. And then I got elected to the board.

• 39:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  And, and so when you're, I guess, like you, you said you'd gone to some of these trainings, you're told to ask questions. What was it like actually participating in the board? Uh, were they receptive? What type of discussions did you have?

• 40:11Speaker 01

  Um, I think it varied a great deal, uh, what the, what the particular topic was, was. And I think it also varied, like, like a lot of the board work actually gets done in committee. And, uh, one of the committees that I was on, so I was on the compensation committee, but I was also on the antitrust committee, which was formed as part of the antitrust, um, uh, settlement with Microsoft. And, um, and, and basically that was an effort to try to make sure that there was nothing Microsoft was doing that could be considered as, you know, going against the settlement.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  And then after the ten year period after the settlement ended, then they reformed it and became the Ethics and Public Policy Committee. And I found those discussions extremely interesting.

• 41:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Fascinating.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  The, the people from, um,

• 41:12Speaker 01

  That we were interacting with were interesting, open, respectful. And so I think just a lot of it depended on who was present. And so, you know, I've already told you that, you know, I have an enormous amount of respect for Satya and Brad Smith. I have a lot of respect for Kathleen Hogan and Amy Hood and, you know, a lot of the senior leadership team at Microsoft. So just different people have a different attitude to actually having a discussion, answering questions, asking questions themselves.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  And I always felt that, you know, with certain groups of people, people took everything you said very seriously and you were heavily engaged in with others, that was less the case.

• 42:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. What type of questions would you tackle with the ethics part of your responsibilities?

• 42:10Speaker 01

  Well, you know, it's a lot of questions about privacy.

• 42:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Pertinent.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  I mean, obviously really important right now. A lot of questions about, you know, obviously, one of the things that the antitrust settlement was about was this, the evidence that Microsoft was putting other competing products out of businesses by including a competing product within the operating system that came for free. And, and so, you know, Netscape is the obvious example where, you know, it basically lost out.

• 42:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  To IE.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  To IE, Internet Explorer. And of course, Google Chrome has since, you know, basically

• 43:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Crushed.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  Taken over there. But, so a lot of these are sort of, you know, what's an appropriate way to use the influence that Microsoft has. You know, other kinds of things are security issues. So I'll never forget at some point, we were told that Microsoft was moving to two-factor security as a way of really protecting everyone and.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  You know, it was something that, you know, was clearly the best in class at the time, and it was a really good thing for Microsoft to do. So, you know, it's, those kinds of issues were the kinds of things that got discussed. Um, I think, I was really pleased that Microsoft came up with a privacy policy that, um, you know, I thought was, was a really good step forward, particularly compared to what, I mean, Apple also has a very strong policy, privacy policy, Google, not so much, Amazon, not so much. So, you know, these, they, these

• 44:19Speaker 01

  issues, um, that was one place where I, one area where I felt Microsoft partly because of having been through the antitrust case, um, took, actually took some really strong positions on things. So, um, so it would be, you know, I don't want to imply that, that there weren't lots of occasions where I felt it was really useful to be on the board, the discussions were really helpful, and, um, it was possible to feel listened to and respected, because there certainly were many of those.

• 44:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  But I guess on the diversity front, that was where it was a struggle.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  Well, it's a struggle with some people.

• 44:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Well, I, I, yeah, sorry, go ahead.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I'll just say Kathleen Hogan is somebody who has really fought for diversity. Amy Hood is another one. Satcho, obviously, is somebody who's pushed hard there. So, uh, but, so I have a funny Bill story. So, I had been invited to invite Bill to be a co-host of a retreat at Sunnylands. Sunnylands is the former home of Walter and Lenore Annenberg. And it was going to be, it had been all refurbished and they were going to start doing retreats. And it had been suggested to me by one of the Mud Board members that I asked Bill if

• 45:41Speaker 01

  he would be co-host. And I suggested the topic of diversity, increasing the diversity in STEM.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  And he said, I'm not interested in that.

• 45:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Bill Gates.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  Yes. And, and so then I said, okay, how about the use of technology in K to 12 math education? He said, oh yeah, I would do that. And I mean, and so that's what we did. And the funny story out of that, and it was a fantastic retreat. And um, the what came out of that was an organization called Ed Reports that reviews math, science and English language arts curriculum for K to 12. It's um, the initial primary funder was the Gates Foundation, but it's now supported by, in addition to Gates, who's still a large, the largest supporter.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  It's supported by um, Hewlett, by uh, Overdeck, um, by Schusterman. And uh, the curriculum folks at the Gates Foundation think it's the most uh, impactful thing they've ever done in K to 12 curriculum. And so much so that they refer to it as a verb. Like if they're looking in the Gates Foundation, if they're looking at something that they want to approve, they say, can we Ed Reports it? So I helped found that organization. I've chaired the board uh, since it was founded. And that came out of that retreat. So that was a really good outcome. And um, so what I would say is there are things Bill's interested in,

• 47:22Speaker 01

  and there's things he's not so interested in. And when he's interested, then he's a great partner.

• 47:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  He can make real, real impactful change.

• 47:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Okay, do you have maybe 10 more minutes where we can talk a little bit about antitrust? Now that you brought it up?

• 47:35Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 47:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. All right, let's go to break quickly um, and, and come back and, and talk about antitrust. We'll be back right after this.

• 48:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here for one final segment on the Big Technology Podcast. Thanks for sticking with us. It's already been 50 plus minutes. Thanks Maria again for joining us. Let's talk about antitrust because one of the things, so there are six bills in Congress right now that are targeted at the big technology companies, maybe Microsoft, maybe not, but certainly Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google. There's also a new head of the FTC, Lina Khan, who is going to be very aggressive when it comes to enforcing some of the rules against these companies. And there's a question of even if it doesn't succeed, can the very nature of the fact that there's going to be regulatory pressure end up hampering these companies' ability to do business?

• 49:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  So Maria, you saw this on the board, you know, serving on the antitrust committee with Microsoft. What sort of burden, and I know there was a settlement, but what sort of burden does this type of activity place on a company that is targeted by it? And this is maybe a little speculative, but I'm curious what you think might happen to the, for aforementioned, or even Microsoft now that the guns are turned on them, so to speak?

• 49:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I mentioned that I worked for IBM Research early in my career and IBM had been targeted. In fact, they, they were never actually charged, as I understand it, but you know, Bell, Ma Bell was broken up. And that was enough that IBM was incredibly careful about trying to make sure there was nothing we would do in IBM Research or any other part of the company that could lead to an antitrust suit.

• 50:07Speaker 01

  And, you know, I was there for the first eight years of my career and it had a big impact. I mean, it just the fact that they were so serious about trying to make sure that they were not seen as shutting down competition was very interesting. And I think it did have, one of the things that I think results that happened was that Sun was very effective in getting their workstations, their Unix workstations into academic computer science departments. And

• 50:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Sun Microsystems.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  Yes, Sun Microsystems.

• 50:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  And IBM really didn't push back. I mean, they, they developed their own Unix workstations, which were not particularly successful.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  And, you know, I just think, it's, it's just interesting. I think that once you, once you think that there's a significant chance that you might be broken up

• 51:15Speaker 01

  or might be put under very significant restrictions, it puts a lot of pressure on a company. So that's the first statement.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  The second thing I would say is, you know, both Microsoft and Google have been hit by fines from the EU over antitrust issues. I think it actually had a significant, more significant impact on Microsoft's behavior than on Google's because Microsoft had been through the antitrust case in the US.

• 51:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  So, I mean, I have no idea of what is going to happen. But I do expect that the threat of antitrust, given that

• 51:59Speaker 01

  We have an administration right now that seems pretty serious about it. Will have a much more significant impact over the next three and a half, four years than it has in the past.

• 52:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  How did the specter of antitrust enforcement, the settlement, impact the way that Microsoft did business after? Because there, there, there's like, there was a view that, oh, Microsoft got away easy. Initially, it was ruled to be broken up and then agreed to stay together under certain conditions. So how did that actually manifest itself in Microsoft's day to day? And as a corollary to that, do you think it helped increase innovation in the world? Because that's what we're kind of worrying about with these bills targeting big tech is whether they're actually, they'll restrain them or help increase innovation. So having been through that with Microsoft, I'm kind of curious where you think that, that factors.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  You know, I almost think that the antitrust suit caused Microsoft to start looking in new directions. And, you know, obviously the move to cloud computing has been a huge plus for Microsoft. And I think it, one of the things that absolutely had to do was move away from making all of its money by selling operating systems and finding another revenue stream that could be equally, and in the end, much more lucrative. So I, I think it actually pushed Microsoft to be more innovative.

• 53:38Speaker 01

  I suspect, I mean, obviously, both Apple and Amazon have done phenomenally well during the pandemic.

• 53:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  They've got lots and lots of resources. You know, obviously, we're going through the transition of Jeff Bezos leaving and Andrew Jassy taking over. Andrew Jassy, I mean, AWS has been phenomenally successful.

• 54:03Speaker 01

  So I have, you know, I have lots of confidence that Amazon will also do well.

• 54:13Speaker 01

  Apple, you know, Tim Cook is a very different leader from Steve Jobs, but Apple has done very well under Tim's leadership.

• 54:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Mm hmm.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  Uh, Facebook

• 54:29Speaker 01

  is a little bit more complicated because of their role in, you know, disinformation that, you know, played, definitely played a role in the 2016 US presidential election. But as far as I can tell, they're doing just fine. So

• 54:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  The business is good. Everybody hates Facebook. The Republicans hate Facebook because they say it censors. The Democrats hate Facebook because it's very good at spreading conservative content. And then misinformation stuff that you mentioned, so.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  But, you know, I mean.

• 55:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Business is in good shape.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  If I look at the people who are getting hired by any of these companies, they're very talented, they're very competitive, and same for Microsoft. They're all being very successful in hiring, uh, hiring people uh, at the early stage of their career, at the middle stage of their career, at the senior stages of their career. They're doing really well. I'm not worried about, um, them lacking innovation in the future.

• 55:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Okay. So it could unlock more innovation. Are, are you overall optimistic about this, about where technology is heading in this country in the US? Uh, and I guess worldwide, and I guess both in terms of innovation, and let's, let's end on this in terms of innovation, but also in terms of like the societal issues like we've discussed so far today.

• 55:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, you know, AI is obviously, it's increasingly uh, having impact on society and having impact in lots of ways that we don't actually know how to predict well. And, um, I'm on the, uh, Advisory Committee for the Shortzman College of Computing at MIT. And, um, I've been very impressed with, uh, some efforts they are making uh, with an AI policy forum where they're really trying to increase the dialogue between. The scientists and the government leaders, not just in the US, but you know, I, I, I think we could screw things up really royally.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  And I think we also could use AI to make things a lot better in many areas like healthcare.

• 56:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Some amazing developments there.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Sure.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  So I, I tend to be a, a pretty optimistic person, but I think the thing that I would say is there's never been a time when diversity is more important in technology. Because, and I don't mean just diversity in terms of gender or race or anything like that, or you know, uh, uh, poverty or social economic levels or any of those kinds of things. I mean, we need more people who understand AI and also understand, pick your favorite area from humanities and social sciences or from some other area of engineering.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  I mean, it's just, it's having so much impact on so many aspects of everything that we do. I, I, I feel like the most important thing we need to do is to make sure that we can educate people, at least at the bachelor's degree level, so that everyone can actually, doesn't matter whether you're going to go into biotech or whether you're going to go into English literature or whatever, so that people can actually understand data science, AI and, and other aspects of technology, because it's going to happen whether we do this or not, and it's going to happen better if we have more voices at the table.

• 58:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Absolutely. Well, that's a great, great note to end it on. Thank you so much for your time, Maria. I, I really appreciate it. You know, I, as I was working on the book, I think I added you on LinkedIn. And always in the back of my mind, I was like, I wonder if Maria would ever speak with me. And so I'm so glad we had a chance to talk today. And for you, for the fact that you were so open about your experiences, I'm sure not easy stuff to talk about, but important stuff to bring out into the fore. So thank you for coming on. Really appreciate it.

• 58:42Speaker 01

  My pleasure. Thank you for asking me.

• 58:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  My pleasure. All right. Well, I think that will do it for us. I just want to say a quick thanks. Nick Guatney, turning this around super quickly. He's our audio editor, Red Circle, for hosting the podcast and selling the ads. If you've heard some ads you like, that's Red Circle. If you heard some ads you don't like, that's my fault. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you made it all the way here, maybe give us a rating. If you enjoyed the podcast, we would appreciate that. And if this is your first time here and you want to subscribe, that would be great. We do this every Wednesday. Conversations with tech insiders or outside agitators, or sometimes people who fall somewhere in the middle. So that's the pitch. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next week on Big Technology Podcast.

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