Deana Solis: How Fears Can Fuel Us
PDXWIT volunteer, mentor, and member of the speakers bureau, Deana Solis is the inaugural FinOps Leader at Smarsh. She attended the first FinOpsX Conference and won the award of first FinOps Evangelist.
As the youngest of four, Deana became known as the most fearful of her family and had to learn how to conquer her fears at a very young age.
Throughout her career, she became fueled by her fears and found them to be a source of inspiration for her professional development, learning new skills, and heightened emotional intelligence. She believes we must acknowledge our fears and to know we have agency in our own outcome.
Tune in to hear how Deana’s fears helped her choose meaningful goals in life and how they’ve impacted her journey as both a mother and mentor.
Learn more about FinOps and the FinOps Foundation here, What is FinOps? - FinOps Foundation.
Transcript
Intro:
Welcome to humanizing tech, a PDXWIT podcast. We interview people to dig below the surface of their achievements and challenges showcasing the story behind the story. We believe that focusing on the person and humanizing their lived experiences will help us shape the future of tech.
Rihana Mungin:
Before we get started, I want to acknowledge the land we are on, wherever we're turning in from. PDXWIT recognizes the ongoing violence, trauma, and erasure indigenous Oregonians and Native American face. Today we're recording from Portland and Portland rests on the traditional village sites of the Multnomah, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Chinook, Tualatin Kalapuya, Molalla and many other tribes who made their homes along the Columbia River. We endeavor to have this acknowledgement be more than just words. The tech industry is building the future of our world, and it is up to us to ensure that there is a future for all. To find out more about how we're supporting the future of indigenous Oregonians and Native Americans, please visit our website. We'll add a link in the show notes.
Anusha Neelam:
This episode of Humanizing Tech is brought to you by First Tech Federal Credit Union. First Tech puts people over profit with personalized financial services and convenient banking solutions to help you thrive. First Tech offers individualized tools for your financial wellness, whether you're saving for college, buying a house, or looking forward to retirement. When you're ready to save time and money, visit firsttechfed.com and see how First Tech invests in you.
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Humanizing Tech. This is your co-host, Anusha, and my pronouns are she, her. I'm super excited to be back co-hosting with my wonderful co-host, Rihana. We've got an awesome guest for you today. So I will pass it off to Rihanna to introduce herself and our guest.
RM:
Why thank you Anusha. And I just wanna say thank you for showing up. I know you recently had Covid. That's why you have this sultry lower octave going on in your voice, and I'm here for it. So thank you.
AN:
Thanks for the callout. I was not gonna say anything, but now I know how I sound. [Laughs]
RM:
Great! You sound great. So yeah, my name is Rihanna Mungin. My pronouns are she, her, and right now I'm the interim as of this recording, I'm the interim executive director at PDXWIT. I potentially will not be when this podcast is released. So who knows? You'll have to check my Instagram. You'll have to check my Facebook. Oh, not Facebook. I don't post on Facebook. I dunno. [laughs] LinkedIn, whatever. But this isn't just about me. This is not, you know, Anusha's not interviewing me. I'm not the one talking the whole time taking up all the space. But I wanna introduce our guest who will be doing that. Our guest today is Deana Solis. Hello, Deana. Did I pronounce your last name correctly?
Deana Solis:
Oh, gosh, that's already a hard question. Yes you did, because there's no wrong pronunciation. Lately I have sort of embraced a different pronunciation, which is Deana Solís. It is a Spanish name but not a name that I have any attachment to with regard to my heritage. So I mispronounce it, sometimes intentionally, we’ll get into that. [laughs]
RM:
Okay. Okay. Thank you. I mean, I know that's kind of crazy, but we've talked so many times, we've talked once a year, and I don't think we've ever done formal introductions where we weren't being silly [laughs]. So thank you. Thank you for that. And Deana, correct me if I'm wrong you are definitely a PDXWIT volunteer. You're a mentor. And you're also a speaker at the Speaker's Bureau. And you are the Senior Financial Operator. What is this, what is this job? I don't know. What is… you work Smarsh, tell us about that.
DS:
My current title at Smarsh is senior FinOps Engineer. And FinOps is a sort of a different, it's a new title. I am the inaugural hire with FinOpsin my title at that company. This year and the last couple of years, a lot of folks are the same at their respective companies because FinOps is a.. I wanna say a movement, but really it's more of a specialty that's evolving within the DevOps and cloud space. And it's been called FinOps because of its relation to DevOps. But it is not only financial operations. It does have a lot more to do with the concentration and the specialty in managing the complexities of cost management at scale the way that cloud infrastructure can scale at such a rapid pace.
AN:
So I guess to kind of start us off today for those, those of those of our listeners who are not as familiar with you and the work that you've done, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?
DS:
I'll just go backwards. Before I was at Smarsh, I spent about six years just under six years actually contracting at a major shoe and apparel manufacturer out on the west side. Before that I worked for about nine years in healthcare IT.
RM:
Oh boy.
DS:
Yeah. Much of that was in infrastructure services, which was actually what prepared me for the kind of thinking and the kind of business management of infrastructure that I'm doing today. In a way, because I got to see how businesses tried to scale technology pre-cloud - before adopting cloud technologies. And before that I was a sales manager at a couple of large retailers of electronics who are no longer around the good guys in Circuit City.
AN: Mm mm-hmm.
DS:
And before that, let's see, Yeah. Before that was my first job was cutting fabric at House of Fabrics. And so in a way I've always sort of been involved in the materials that people use to actualize their missions. So that's a really lofty thing to say about it, but, it's the way that I connect to it. And whatI will also say is that before I got into IT I actually had dropped out of college as a senior, and I went back after those seven years as a retail manager sort of hitting the shelf life of that career.
RM: Was pun that unintended? [laughs]
DS:
Totally. I mean, the whole profession kind of shaped my vocabulary. So I do kind of talk in retail terms sometimes. And I skipped a couple of jobs in there, but one thing about that is that I'm an introvert and I was paid on commission and selling on commission and training other sales representatives and customer service on electronics products. And it was a thing that I love to do. But I think looking back now, I realize that one of the reasons I hit that end of that career and why it was so abrupt was because I'd sort of gone seven years nonstop performing as an extrovert, and I was done [laughs]
RM:
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Well, so a lot of people just make assumptions that if you're introverted, like, Oh, how could you be a sales manager? But that's not really true. Introversion comes up in a lot of different ways. You wanna talk a little bit about how that shows up for you? Cause clearly seven years, that's a long time to be going that way.
DS:
I'm always very conscious of my voice shaking, of my hands, my physical form shaking and not being able to recover. I think that I'm also a proud owner of a standup paddle board, and I have an intense fear of falling in water and drowning. And nevertheless, it's one of the best feelings to say hello to that fear, recognize it - old friend - and you know, say, welcome. You're not going to change the outcome because I know I've practiced my balance. I've practiced the skills that I need to get from this end of the [laughs] of the marina to the other side of the beach.
AN: Mm-Hmm.
RM:
Okay but that's, that's some wisdom. As a kid, were you born into this feeling? Is that what you always
DS:
Did I mention I'm the youngest of my siblings. [laughs] I don't know if that is, I don't know if that tracks, but I think it does because I did have to sometimes face fears or be left behind. And I say literally left behind either, like, if we were running on a trail, they would leave me behind. [all laughs]
I don't know. Some of my cousins' brothers might deny it now, but I was certain that when they said they would leave me behind, that they were telling the truth. And I never took the chance that they weren't. And so, no matter how scary, whatever it was became I would push through. Oh gosh, you know what? I just had a flashback. Can I share it with you?
RM: Oh, yes.
AN: Please.
RM:
If this was like a visual medium, I want like, the wavy lines, and I wanted to go back and have this transported, but please share it.
DS:
I've been thinking about a lot of these moments that I've really kind of suppressed and not just not thought about for a long, long time because I have gone through periods of just, I'm not gonna let those fears define me [laughs]. But as I was talking about my cousins, I just remembered why do I always tell that story, but what is it connected to? And now I remember we were going to baseball practice, and it wasn't my baseball practice, but I think it was probably because my cousins were on a little league team, my brothers too. So it could have been any of them. And we usually traveled in a pretty large pack. Well, my brothers and my two older male cousins sort of set the tone [laughs] on how quick we were, how fast we were going to walk, which path, however dark and scary, we were going to take.
And I had pretty much learned most of my limits from that. One time I didn't realize that there was another way that we could walk. And it was taking the overpass over a freeway. And the San Bernardino freeway in southern California is four lanes going one way, four lanes going the other way. The overpass is pretty high up. And I did not realize until that day that among my fears, superior to all my other fears is heights.
AN: Yep, me too.
DS:
I got about to the point where I could see how long the bridge was, how high it was, and that it was getting higher from the point where I was standing. And that was the first time that I ever felt a real paralysis that I could remember. Not the only time, but it was the first time [laugh]. How awful was that? I do actually think that I sort of blacked out because what I remember was being picked up and just shutting my eyes and being able to open my eyes when we were at the other end of the bridge. And I'm pretty sure that that also happened playing in the waves at the beach. At Southern California beaches, I would sort of sometimes just shut down, close my eyes and hope that someone bigger would rescue me.
And I'm alive. I'm here with you today, [laughs]. Those were things though that at the time made me the most fearful among my extended family and known for it. And it wasn't something that I was proud of. But it was something that as the youngest, I did get, I was looked after, I was cared for. Apparently loved. [laughs] And so, I don't think that anyone ever worked with me and said, Look, you've gotta get over your fear of heights, or, or you've gotta get over your fear of the water. It was just as I got older, I think that I realized that I was getting too big to be carried over or rescued in the waves. And so I would have to understand what my limits were.
I would have to learn some skills. One was just really stay out of the water. And, you know, certain bridges and overpasses were just out of the question for me. And so fear is sort of a thing that I've gotten such an up close sensitivity to that it's never not been a part of me. But I will also say that the understanding of what fears can control me were not physical things. They were more my testing myself with things like a sales script or a fundraising script and using sort of techniques that were a little bit like, No one's going to save me, so I might as well try this. And if I'm paralyzed here, I'm not going to be hurt, so I might as well just keep, keep pushing.
AN: Mhmm.
DS: And I think that the fact that I was also someone who really wanted to be independent and earned my own income while I was still in school, made it so that I would just keep practicing and practice and practice and practice. And, fortunately being in sales and having the kind of training I did in telemarketing I really did learn from experts how to compartmentalize a bit. And really to try to look at the feelings that I was having as something that couldn't have power over me unless I let it. And I think it was 15 or 20 years later that I got a word for that. And it was this emotional intelligence. It was the idea that this is a learnable thing. That it's… once it becomes visible, and once you understand what the problem is or what the challenge is, and you understand what the skills are to try to resolve it, it's not automatic, it's not magic, but it can be learned and it can be practiced.
And it doesn't necessarily have to go away for me to be successful. Like, every time I try something new, I'm terrified all over again. And it feels [laughs], it's a great signal that I'm doing something that it better be worth it to me. And frankly, that's why I didn't really wanna go any further in a sales career. It didn't mean enough to me to keep setting goals based on dollar signs. It made a lot more sense to me to know that I was doing work that I could be proud of. [Laughs] That I could make my parents proud with
RM:
Anusha, did Deana articulate any love of your feelings around fears for you? Because it's just like, Oh!
AN: Absolutely.
RM: Yeah it’s like Oh my God.
AN:
Yeah. And I mean, I can definitely relate to everything that you were talking about, and I think especially, your identification of being an introvert, like that's something that I fully understand. And I think Rihana is a great point too, that like, not all introverts are gonna have the same fears. I think that for everyone it's a little bit different. And I'm actually curious, Deana like, I know from talking to my peers and friends it's a pretty common struggle for folks to feel comfortable speaking up and advocating for themselves in the workplace. Like regardless of how they identify or what their like core personality might be. And I know that's just like a fear that a lot of people have. And I'm curious to know, like what experience you've had with challenges based on certain ways that you identify in the workplace and how that's resulted for you and how you've like, overcome that? Like, do you have any advice for people who want to get over the fear or any challenges that they have in the workplace, but specifically in trying to speak up and advocate for themselves and conquer fears?
DS:
I read the statistic that for women, it's so much easier to advocate for others. It is so much easier to advocate for a policy than it ever is to advocate for ourselves. Because when I was fighting for them, I knew that I did not care what anyone thought of me. I only cared about how they behaved toward the policy or the person, or the rights that I was defending.
And it gave me practice. But maybe again, when it came to speaking for myself, I tried to let my work speak for myself. And that's also to say that my work wasn't always the best work, or at least I believed that when I didn't get a promotion or when I was… Oh, Rihanna, when I was an interim something or other [laughs], I think it was like two years that I held an interim service delivery something or other management, yada, yada. In those two years, I got a title change and I got an increase in my salary, but not the increase I asked for or that I deserved, and not the title change of the work that I was actually doing. And it was okay for me because it was enough and I didn't know what the market value was. I didn't know what the market value would have been had I been a white male at the time. [laughs]
AN: Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>.
DS:
But I do know now, and I know too, that I can still be really proud of the fact that I was a primary wage earner the whole time. I was a leader the whole time. And whether or not I was recognized that way externally is okay. My clients, my peers, their recognition is what mattered to me. And I know now how I would correct that, and I can't go back and correct it. So I mentor people and try to help them prepare for those battles ahead of time. You're not always gonna be a hundred percent prepared when the salary negotiation discussion comes up. But chances are it's going to come up. And if you don't start preparing for it, if you don't have a mentor, if you don't have a peer with some seniority and experience who's willing to share honestly their experiences with you.
Then you're going to go into it accepting defeat before you even make the effort. Right? And that's one of the reasons, actually, that I'm really called to be a people leader and be a mentor. And I think that because I can't really separate myself from when I mentor, when I coach, or that sort of thing. And I think that in terms of speaking for ourselves all the time, I'm working on it all the time. I'm working on it at this moment, I realized I'm exactly where I belong. I see myself on my moving path and I made it this way.
RM:
Okay. I love you saying that you are exactly where you belong. Like, it takes a long time to feel that way when you're in tech.
DS: It does.
AN:
Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. [Laughs]. And I also like what I was hearing about, just as far as speaking for yourself, a lot of it is about using your resources and your tools to know your worth. Right? To know how to assess like the market and being able to understand what your skills are and what you're worth. So I love that.
DS:
I actually really enjoy having conversations… like reconnecting with peers that I formerly worked with, who I consider peer mentors. I think that we all grew because we were all willing to have honest conversations. And I love reconnecting with them and then saying, Do you feel comfortable talking about salaries now? And I had one friend back.. in healthcare IT, who we had really, really similar qualifications for a lot of things. And she helped me break out of the shyness of asking that question because she said very boldly, whatever you're making, it's not enough. And I know that because I've seen the pay band, and if we were in this other city, if we were just across the river, this is how much we'd be making. And, and I realize that, oh my gosh, I'm in technology. I work with information. I'm a keeper of information. I can get information.
It turns out I can actually ask a question and research the answer and then I can act. And again, it wasn't… it was at different points in your career, you're gonna make different decisions to get yourself to that next level. And that next level may have nothing to do with getting more technical. It may be getting less technical. It may be about connecting the work that you're nearest to the causes that you care the most about. And I'm all about that. I think that no amount of money is worth taking me away from that sort of work.
RM:
You're more than just a person working in tech. You told us before, you are the youngest [laughs] in the family, your youngest of all your siblings, [laughs], you are a child of immigrants, your parents are from the Philippines. You are a woman. You have all of these different aspects of your identity. You know, you talked about being an introvert, and I think it would be all of us in this call, anybody who's listening can just imagine what those microaggressions might be, what you've based in the industry, and, it'd be nice to hear a little bit about that story and how that's shown up for you and how you've dealt with it. Because it just sucks to talk about, but it makes people feel less alone.
DS:
Oh gosh. When I learned the term microaggression, it filled so many gaps for me of understanding. Like, why couldn't I just say that I didn't feel welcome in a room? I just didn't know why. But here's the deal though. And this is just in all honesty it took hearing it defined for me by someone who had defined it and experienced it and described it for me to understand, to even put it together that I had ever been through that. And even then, by then I had developed such a shell, a hard shell of defense. Brene Brown says the thing about strong back, soft front. The idea is that when you're open to things, when you are vulnerable… you can't wear your armor and still be open. And so I was armored up pretty heavily for most of my adulthood.
RM:
Just really quick, do you remember when that was defined for you? Like how long ago? Cause I feel like microaggressions were like in the last five years.
DS:
I feel like it was just that too. And so imagine spending 20 years in a career and…
RM: No thank you. I don't wanna imagine that.
DS:
Right? I do. I do. I think it's really important because generationally, and I'm turning 51 next month,
RM: Stop it.
DS:
And I'm pretty dang proud of that. I know that when I first heard that it immediately helped me understand why.. It immediately helped me understand the fight that I wasn't taking on. That, oh gosh, that I was staying in my position of defense to protect myself. But I was letting other people, I was letting other people experience these thousand cuts without saying a word. And I felt like by the time that word entered my vocabulary, I wasn't the person who you could inflict a paper cut on because I was so well armored. I was, though, a person that was advancing in my career, keeping my head down, showing up for work on time, doing my thing, and, and not speaking up when some small thing happen, like for example, oh my gosh, I remember last year when we were doing the the panel for a AAPI heritage month someone asked a question, and I remember just realizing, Oh my gosh, I've been one of those people who have said to a coworker Why don't we run it through? And if you want me to explain it for you, I will speak for you, because they'll hear it without an accent. And will drive that point. And so here I thought, I thought I'm doing something to help this person. When instead, I should have been saying to the people who weren't listening, who were not, by the way, senior to the person who was not being listened to.
This is the expert in the room. If you can't understand what they're saying, get the documentation and prep before the meeting and ask the questions and ask until you understand. And work at recognizing different accents, because it is unacceptable that we don't allow different accents into a room, especially when that's the person whose expertise we're all counting on. Oh, man. And I just remember thinking, and I also remember that person and I were about the same age, and she was a recent immigrant. And, and I remember us like high fiving and, and saying, That's it, that's the solution, because that was the world we lived in. Yeah. And all we needed to know was that we could get through this thing. But when it came down to it we all sort of defaulted to, well, which one of us sounds the most American?
RM: Ugh.
DS: Ugh. Yeah.
RM: What else can you say besides that “ugh” [of disgust]?
DS: So not the proudest moment, but that was me not, NOT recognizing a microaggression for what it was. That was me upholding a standard that was an anti-pattern to a value that we said we had, which was that we were a company, that we were a global company. And I mean, we had international colleagues, and yet the standard we maintained was the most unrealistically attainable one. And we got away with it. [laughs]
RM: Ugh.
DS:
And, and whew. And it's something that I don't want to suppress or forget anymore the way that I had for many years because I need it to inform me. I need it to keep me on my toes, to keep my eyes open to when those microaggressions come up because they're so internalized.
AN:
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>
DS:
We internalize them so much. All of the things that I had been told about being a woman and how I didn't belong, well, that was no problem, because I grew up that way. I was the only girl on a little league baseball team, and I played against my sister's team, and she was the only girl on her team. And we knew that we were tough enough to be the only girl. It didn't occur to us that we weren't the only girls that wanted to play. We really did just accept that when people told us that we were weird, that we were wrong, that we were. But we were gonna be that way. So…
AN:
Mm-Hmm.
RM:
I don't know if either of you feel this way, but when I started understanding, like when I heard the microaggressions defined, it was like, Oh my goodness, this is what has happened to me. And all these like, experiences. And then the same thing happened with me, Deana, like all of those moments of me trying to support people. It's like, Oh no, I was just working around a system to work around people that didn't really care and were perpetuating those microaggressions. But when I understood it, I stopped catering to those kinds of feelings. So it's like, no. If someone's telling me to take notes, I'm going to get spicy about it. Like, don't tell me to clean up. I hate cleaning. Once I had that definition, it was like, Nuhuh, I'm not gonna do this nonsense anymore.
AN:
Education goes a long way. I mean, yeah. Same like the two of you. I mean, I didn't learn the term microaggression for the longest time, probably the last few years. And, you know, I grew up the child of immigrants as well in Beaverton, Oregon, which is like, when I was growing up, it was like a very, very white city. And there were maybe two other kids, even in my graduating class in high school that looked like me. And I always went through life pretty much up until then thinking like, there's just something about me, I don't fit in. Yeah. And it just never occurred to me that it was other people and the ways is in which they were interacting with me. And it just went like such a long way once I started to put it together, once I started to really learn what was going on. So Yeah.
RM:
It kind of solidifies your identity, right? Like it makes it..
AN:
Oh, yeah. Oh yeah.
RM:
It's like you gaslight yourself into feeling like you’re the problem.
AN:
Totally, totally. Mm-Hmm. It's sad, really.
DS:
It's probably something that we talk about our… this is a women in tech group. This is a professional association in its origin. We are sort of centered around thinking about our careers, but decolonizing my mind is part of the process of understanding where the microaggressions became invisible to me. Where I became insensitive to them. And they didn't just happen in my professional life. They were in my marriage. They were in my identity as the mother of a biracial son. And it was in the way that we thought of ourselves as humans. And the way that I remember some of my really close friends, we would have some nicknames for our very close biracial friends. And one of 'em, if you're Filipino, Oh gosh, Yeah. I don't even wanna… But actually the, like the Japanese word hapa, it comes from half, it comes from the identity of.. and it was so important to me when I became a mom 19 years ago [laughs] that my child would never be half a human.
RM: Aww.
DS:
He is a hundred percent Filipino and he is a hundred percent the other thing [laughs]
Sorry. He's a white passing male. So he's not half of anything. And I think that was always a really important thing that I didn't put it on a bumper sticker. I didn't put it on a t-shirt or anything, but it was something that I needed to internalize in order to know what kind of parent I was. Cause I waited a long time to be a parent and I wanted so badly to not mess it up with the kind of programming that I knew was in my head, and that I knew I hadn't completely been able to shed by 2003. I mean even then I was like, I'm gonna mess this up so bad. [laughs] But it turned out okay. He's fine. He's, he's alive. So..
[all laugh]
RM: You got your priorities.
DS: I do. I do.
AN:
Well, Deana, I think this has just been such an amazing conversation. I feel like so much of what we talked about is gonna just resonate with so many people. I'm glad that we got to touch on so many important topics. And I think you might be our first FinOps leader that we've had on the podcast.
RM: I think so.
AN: I would have to check but you might be, Yeah.
DS: I guarantee [laughs]
AN:
And I mean, I know that throughout this conversation there have been some links that have been thrown out there, so we'll try to add those to the show notes cuz I think it's important that people that are pursuing a career in this area understand how to pursue some engagement involvement with the community. So yeah, we'll definitely try and do that. But I hate to have to wrap up the segment, but I wanted to take a moment to ask you if you have any advice or any suggestions or a call to action to leave our listeners with?
DS:
Oh, man. I love that you ask that question. And I'm glad that we were just now talking about sort of my motherhood journey, which is not something I don't actually get to talk about a whole lot. But I wanna say that my call to action is for all of us to just remember that there's never one moment when we decide that we are going to go out and build a career. We might make it linear. We might make it a series of, of zigs and zags and circular paths, but whatever we're doing, chances are the reason that it looks the way that it looks is because we have reproductive organs and because we have to plan for that, we have to plan for the fact that we have a smaller selection of employers that understand what we need in terms of flexibility, in terms of oh gosh [laughs] tampons in the restroom.
RM: Mhmmm.
DS: In terms of the fact that we are so often the primary caregivers. And given what we have just been through these last few days, these last.. so much longer. But, by the way, yeah. I still wanna celebrate because today is such a good day. We're recording this the day that Ketanji Brown Jackson is sworn in as a Supreme Court justice. So it's not to say that we don't recognize when progress is made, but we also need to keep our focus on the fact that that there are systems and powers and unfortunately humans who are trying to shut down the amount of progress that we've made, and we don't have a choice not to act, we don't have a choice not to not to make some small decision to help the next person with reproductive organs succeed.
We don't have an option to not network within underrepresented groups in our roles. And it's why I'm here. It's not gonna look the same. It's not gonna look the same as it does for me for the next person listening to this. You might be a lot earlier in your career and you might need to armor up a little bit more for now. And that's okay. And for that person, I would say the call to action is when it feels like you need to get a little bit harder, chances are you need a little bit more help. So reach out and ask, and we're here, we're here for you. That's what this community is for me.
AN: Oh, thank you.
RM:
Oh, I was just gonna say, I am so glad that you're part of the speakers bureau at PDXWIT, Deana. You are such a powerful speaker. And that was… what you just said had a pretty big impact on me, and I'm getting a little emotional and I'm really glad that you said that to kind of help keep me refocused. So yeah, I wanted to thank you for that. I appreciate you and the work that you do.
AN:
Yeah. And I just thank you so much for being vulnerable, transparent, and just so passionate about that call to action. It feels like something that so many of our listeners could probably use right now. And I just really appreciate everything that we talked about today.
DS:
I appreciate the two of you too, so much. I see what you do, I see the work you're doing and this, I'm not here if it weren't from being inspired by you, Anusha and Rihana and Dawn and Isabelle and Hazel and Crystal, and I wanna say all the names, but I'll forget, but so many people have inspired me first. First. That made it very clear that this store is open. And as passionate as I am about the FinOps Foundation I was passionate first and I will be longer about PDXWIT.
AN:
Aw, well thank you so much.
RM:
Thank you, Deana. I feel like Anusha I just need to drop this gem because almost every time I've seen Deana in person, we hang out at the beginning of the night and then I have a couple of glasses of wine or something else, and I always leave being like, Deana, should we get married? [laughs]
AN:
Wait, where are you and Deana hanging out that I'm not there?
RM:
These are at PDXWIT events. These are like the volunteer celebrations. I'm just like, should we get married and then we laugh really hard and then I roll away home and then a year later we have a great confrontation like this.
DS:
It is very much a - how are we not hanging out more?
RM:
I know, I know. It's a crime.
DS:
And then, you know, and then life and Yeah. Small circles, we keep our circles small and I'm looking forward to spending more time with both of you in the future.
AN: Likewise.
RM: Yeah I agree.
AN:
Yeah. Well, I know that our listeners are gonna be super excited to tune into this one. There's so much good stuff that we covered. And again, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us, Deana. And also I just wanna give a huge shout out to my lovely co-host Rihana. Always a pleasure hosting with you.
RM: Thank you. Thank you.
AN: [laughs] And to our incredible podcast team. We've got some really amazing people that really work hard behind the scenes to get all of these stories pulled together after we record them and make it possible for us to share all these amazing stories. So yeah, just a really huge shout out to the podcast team and then of course, our listeners thank you for tuning in. And we hope to catch you on the next episode.
RM:
All right, thank you. Bye everybody.
Outro:
PDXWIT is a 501C3 nonprofit. We're building a better tech industry by creating access, dismantling inequities and feeling belonging. Find out more about us at www.PDXWIT.org. Like this podcast? Subscribe and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Wanna give us feedback? Contact us podcast@pxwit.org to help us improve and ensure you learn and grow from the stories you hear on humanizing tech.